


Try Again Tomorrow

by icewhisper



Category: One Day at a Time (TV 2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, but feel free to wear your shipping goggles if you'd like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: They cleaned the alcohol out of his apartment that night while her mami sat on the couch with him and he told her every place he’d squirreled away a bottle.





	Try Again Tomorrow

They cleaned the alcohol out of his apartment that night while her _mami_ sat on the couch with him and he told her every place he’d squirreled away a bottle. There were less than her mind had dreamed up, but four were still enough to make her feel sick. The empties hidden at the bottom of the recycling. The little bottle of mouthwash on the bathroom counter – a perfect size to fit cleanly in a pocket, she thought, and tossed that in the trash too.

She took the bag down to the dumpster, glass bottles clinking, and reminded herself to spray something in the kitchen when she went back up. Maybe she should have poured out the bottles in her sink instead of his.

“Is that all?” she asked when the kitchen smelled like the Bahamas and Schneider still hadn’t lifted his head from his hands.

He pulled in a breath that sounded shaky and stood, slow steps and heavy shoulders as he bent down and popped open the glass door on a media center. She watched him pull out a DVD and frowned – partly because it was too small to hold a bottle and also because she knew how much he’d hated Green Lantern – and went still.

Stared at the little baggie he was holding out to her with shaking fingers.

“I didn’t use it,” he swore, voice hoarse. “Knew if I did, there’d be no coming back.”

It didn’t make him having it any better. It didn’t make him hiding it in a DVD Elena had once given to him as a joke okay. Some distant part of her wondered if he’d left it there on purpose, to act as a reminder of what he’d lose, but the thought of drugs near something her daughter had touched still made her skin crawl.

“You’re gonna take a test,” she told him, firm.

He nodded and looked back to her mother. “Lydia-”

She held up a hand and moved closer to him. “There’s more _sopa de pollo_ in the fridge. You eat it, get some sleep-”

“-and try again tomorrow,” he finished with her at a murmur. His shoulders shook as she crooked her finger and he bent down low enough that she could kiss his forehead.

It was a moment she didn’t understand – something that made her feel distinctly like an outsider – as Schneider’s arms went around her _mami_ and held on tight. She knew they were close, had been long before she and the kids had moved back to LA and into the apartment her parents had never left after she and Victor reenlisted. Knew that her _mami_ had known Schneider through his ups and downs, that he’d been the one who sat with her until they could fly out after _Papi_ died.

She wondered how much her mother had actually seen. How many times she’d held his hand when he had no one else.

“He’ll eat it tomorrow, _Mami_ ,” she said as she slipped the baggie into her pocket. “Get what you need. You’re sleeping on our couch tonight.”

“Pen-”

“Go.”

Her _mami_ stepped beside her when he disappeared into his room, her voice low, and said, “You don’t trust him alone.”

“There’s not a lot of trust right now,” she replied, “but he’s family.” She wanted to help him – she _did_ – but a part of her still wondered if it was the right thing to do, if having him so close to her kids when he was so shaken up was the right thing. “Can you go put your rum away? Somewhere he won’t look.”

 “ _Claro_.” She gave her daughter a sad smile. “He’ll be okay, Lupe.”

She wanted to remind her mother that it wasn’t that easy. They’d been there before, had watched Victor spiral into something that Penelope couldn’t stop. They’d seen the dark times and felt the pain when the only thing left to do was walk away.

Alcohol. Pills. For every horrible thing he’d touched, though, Victor had never gone near the likes of what she’d hidden away in her pocket. She still had trouble imagining _Schneider_ touching them, no matter how many times she’d heard him comment on his past.

But it was there, the proof of it was shoved deep into the pocket of her jeans, and it made it hurt to breathe.

Letting the blades of the garbage disposal tear it to bits wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped it would be, but she let it run a little longer than necessary in case it changed.

“Was there more?” she asked tightly when she saw Schneider appear at the edge of her vision.

“No.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“No.”

She looked at him, taking in the sag in his shoulders, downcast eyes, and the way he kept pulling his sleeves over his hands with shaking fingers. Shame. Exhaustion. There was a self-loathing behind it all that she didn’t think she’d ever seen on him before. “You took a while to pack,” she pointed out, eyes on the half-full bag at his feet.

“I called Nick,” he admitted. “Can show you my phone, if you want.” There was no bitterness in the tone when he said it, just defeat. She thought bitterness may have hurt less.

It still didn’t stop her from checking his recent calls.

“He was nice,” she commented when she handed his phone back.

“You thought he was cute.”

“I did,” she confessed. “He seemed so familiar, though. It was driving me crazy. I couldn’t place it.”

“He’s Max’s brother.” Schneider squinted at her when her eyes went wide. “I thought you knew. He’s all over Max’s Instagram.”

“No, I didn’t know!” After their failed attempt at her meeting his parents, they’d never gotten around to planning a do-over, and she’d stopped looking at his social media after the LeggyMeggy25 fiasco.  It wasn’t that she hadn’t known Max had a brother or that his brother had his own past. Max had mentioned it once and she’d seen Max the couple times he’d been there when Schneider was at dinner with them; the ease of the way Max saw him be the only adult at the table with water in his glass and how he never tried to pass him anything stronger than a soda. It had been a quiet acknowledgement that she’d never let herself dwell on. “So when you called him your sponsor that time-”

“-That was me talking out my ass,” Schneider corrected before she could finish. “I didn’t realize who he was until I saw his Instagram. I don’t think Max even knew.”

“So Nick…”

“Definitely knew who you were.” The quirk of a smile Schneider gave her didn’t look entirely forced and he dodged out of her way when she moved to smack him on their way out the door.

She linked her arm with his when they made it into the hall, half to try and grab at a sense of normalcy and half to make sure he didn't run again. The trust would come back eventually, she knew, but the hurt of it all was still too fresh and the anger that he'd gone off and met with a dealer…

She gripped his arm a little tighter. “Can I ask you something?”

“Hm?”

“Pat?”

He chuckled, something honest and embarrassed. “I was nervous the first time I went,” he explained, “and probably took the anonymous part a little too seriously. I think most of them know it's not actually my name. Nick knows it's not.”

“So Pat is…”

“Middle name.”

She hummed softly. For all the years she'd known him, he'd always introduced himself as Schneider. His signatures on paperwork had always been preceded by a swooping D, but nothing else. “So the D stands for what? David?”

“Dwayne.”

“Really?” She tilted her head at him, brows furrowed, and tried to decide if he looked like a Dwayne. Not any more than he looked like a Pat, but she thought he really just looked like a Schnieder. “Huh.”

“Does it pass inspection?” he asked, joking, but it fell flat when he couldn’t muster a smile. He looked exhausted.

“Maybe.”

She let go of his arm when they reached her apartment and glanced back when he didn’t follow her in. “Get in here. You’re not sleeping in the hallway and we both know what _Mami_ will do to you if you try to go back to your place tonight.”

He grimaced and stepped inside, shoving his hands into his pockets while he moved. “Pen-”

“If you’re about to say you’re okay or that we don’t have to do this, you’d better think again,” she told him, firm. “Family helps family.”

She didn’t expect him to look like he was going to cry.

It made something in her chest ache and she stepped forward, arched up onto her tiptoes so she could cup the back of his head and make him look at her. “Mistakes happen. Trust gets rebuilt. Family is still family. That part doesn’t change. _Claro_?”

“ _Claro_ ,” he replied, voice hoarse. He nodded in her grip.

Her feet were starting to ache with how high she was pushing herself up, but she stayed there and used her leverage to pull him into a hug. He leaned into her, heavy, and held on. It was almost too tight. She held him back just as tight, only letting up when her shoulder twinged in an old pain. “Are you hungry? You never had your soup.”

He shook his head. “Think I’m just gonna try and get some sleep before…” He waved a hand and looked away. Right. Withdrawal. She’d never had to watch him go through it before – had never even watched Victor go through it, because he’d never gotten there while they were still together – but her mother had. Her mother had watched Schneider bounce back and forth until he found his footing and, then, they’d all missed it when he lost it again.

New day tomorrow, she told herself as she grabbed a blanket and spare pillow from the closet. He’d feel like hell and she’d still make him pee in a cup, but it was a step in the right direction.

He was already lying down when she got back, legs curled up towards him, and she wasn’t sure if it was nausea kicking in or despondence. She draped the blanket over him and poked him so he’d lift his head for the pillow.

She thought about the things he and her _mami_ had said before, words low like the phrase was a mantra that meant something important, but they weren’t her words and it wasn’t her place. She leaned down and kissed his forehead instead.

Pretended she didn’t hear the way his breath shuddered.

The End


End file.
